The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri
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between the isles of Cyprus and Mallorca so great a crime Neptune never witnessed among the deeds of pirates or the Argives.
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That traitor, who sees only with one eye and rules the land that someone with me here wishes he’d never fed his eyes upon,
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will have them come to join him in a parley, then see to it they do not waste their breath on vows or prayers to escape Focara’s wind. ”
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And I to him: “If you want me to bring back to those on earth your message—who is the one sated with the bitter sight? Show him to me. ”
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At once he grabbed the jaws of a companion standing near by, and squeezed his mouth half open, announcing, “Here he is, and he is mute.
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73. Although nothing certain is known about the life of Pier da Medicina, we do know that his home was in Medicina, a town in the Po River valley (“the gentle plain, ” which lies between the towns of Vercelli and Marcabò, 74) near Bologna. According to the early commentator Benvenuto da Imola, Pier da Medicina was the instigator of strife between the Polenta and Malatesta families.
92-93. The Pilgrim refers to what Pier da Medicina said earlier about “someone” who “wishes he’d never fed his eyes upon” Rimini (86-87).
This man, in exile, drowned all Caesar’s doubts and helped him cast the die, when he insisted: ’A man prepared, who hesitates, is lost. ’ “
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How helpless and bewildered he appeared, his tongue hacked off as far down as the throat, this Curio, once so bold and quick to speak!
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And one who had both arms but had no hands, raising the gory stumps in the filthy air so that the blood dripped down and smeared his face,
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cried: “You, no doubt, also remember Mosca, who said, alas, ‘What’s done is over with, ’ and sowed the seed of discord for the Tuscans. ”
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“And of death for all your clan, ” I quickly said, and he, this fresh wound added to his wound, turned and went off like one gone mad from pain.
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But I remained to watch the multitude, and saw a thing that I would be afraid to tell about without more evidence,
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were I not reassured by my own conscience— that good companion enheartening a man beneath the breastplate of its purity.
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I saw it, I’m sure, and I seem to see it still: a body with no head that moved along, moving no differently from all the rest;
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97-102. Caius Cribonius Curio wishes he had never seen Rimini, the city near which the Rubicon River empties into the Adriatic. Once a Roman tribune under Pompey, Curio defected to Caesar’s side, and, when the Roman general hesitated to cross the Rubicon, Curio convinced him to cross and march on Rome. At that time the Rubicon formed the boundary between Gaul and the Roman Republic; Caesar’s decision to cross it precipitated the Roman Civil War.
106-108. Mosca, about whom the Pilgrim earlier had asked Ciacco (Canto VI, 80), was a member of the Lamberti family of Florence. His counsel (“What’s done is over with, ” 107) was the cause of the division of Florence into the feuding Guelph and Ghibelline parties.
he held his severed head up by its hair, swinging it in one hand just like a lantern, and as it looked at us it said: “Alas!”
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Of his own self he made himself a light and they were two in one and one in two. How could this be? He who ordained it knows.
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And when he had arrived below our bridge, he raised the arm that held the head up high to let it speak to us at closer range.
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It spoke: “Now see the monstrous punishment, you there still breathing, looking at the dead, see if you find suffering to equal mine!
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And that you may report on me up there, know that I am Bertran de Born, the one who evilly encouraged the young king.
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Father and son I set against each other: Achitophel with his wicked instigations did not do more with Absalom and David.
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Because I cut the bonds of those so joined, I bear my head cut off from its life-source, which is back there, alas, within its trunk.
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In me you see the perfect contrapasso !”
CANTO XXIX
WHEN THE PILGRIM is rebuked by his mentor for his inappropriate interest in these wretched shades, he replies that he was looking for someone. Virgil tells the Pilgrim that he saw the person he was looking for, Geri del Bello, pointing a finger at him. They discuss Geri until they reach the edge of the next bolgia, where all types of Falsifiers are punished. There miserable, shrieking shades are afflicted with diseases of various kinds and are arranged in various positions. Sitting back to back, madly scratching their leprous sores, are the shades of Griffolino da Arezzo and one Capocchio, who talk to the Pilgrim, the latter shade making wisecracks about the Sienese.
134-136. One of the greatest of the Provençal troubadours, Bertran de Born lived in the second half of the twelfth century. He suffers here in Hell for having caused the rebellion of Prince Henry (the “young king, ” 135) against his father, Henry II, king of England.
The crowds, the countless, different mutilations, had stunned my eyes and left them so confused they wanted to keep looking and to weep,
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but Virgil said: “What are you staring at? Why do your eyes insist on drowning there below, among those wretched, broken shades?
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You did not act this way in other bolge. If you hope to count them one by one, remember, the valley winds some twenty-two miles around;
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and already the moon is underneath our feet; the time remaining to us now is short— and there is more to see than you see here. ”
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“If you had taken time to find out what I was looking for, ” I started telling him, “perhaps you would have let me stay there longer. ”
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My guide was moving on, with me behind him, answering as I did while we went on, and adding: “Somewhere down along this ditch
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that I was staring at a while ago, I think there is a spirit of my family mourning the guilt that’s paid so dear down there. ”
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And then my master said: “From this time on you should not waste another thought on him; think on ahead, and let him stay behind,
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10. The sun, then, is directly overhead, indicating that it is midday in Jerusalem.
for I saw him standing underneath the bridge pointing at you, and threatening with his gesture, and I heard his name called out: Geri del Bello.
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That was the moment you were so absorbed with him who was the lord of Altaforte that you did not look his way before he left. ”
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“Alas, my guide, ” I answered him, “his death by violence, which has not yet been avenged by anyone who shares in his disgrace,
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made him resentful, and I suppose for this he went away without a word to me, and because he did I feel great piety. ”
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We spoke of this until we reached the start of the bridge across the next bolgia, from which the bottom, with more light, might have been seen.
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Having come to stand above the final cloister of Malebolge, we saw it spreading out, revealing to our eyes its congregation.
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Weird shrieks of lamentation pierced through me like arrow-shafts whose tips are barbed with pity, so that my hands were covering my ears.
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Imagine all the sick in the hospitals of Maremma, Valdichiana, and Sardinia between the months of July and September,
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crammed all together rotting in one ditch— such was the misery here; and such a stench was pouring out as comes from flesh decaying.
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29. The lord of Altaforte was Bertran de Born. (See Canto XXVIII, 130-142.)
Still keeping to our left, we made our way down the long bridge onto the final bank, and now my sight was clear enough to find
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the bottom where the High Lord’s ministress, Justice infallible, metes out her punishment to falsifiers she registers on earth.
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I doubt if all those dying in Aegina when the air was blowing sick with pestilence and the animals, down to the smallest worm,
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all perished (later on this ancient race, according to what the poets tell as true, was born again from families of ants)
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offered a scene of greater agony than was the sight spread out in that dark valley of heaped-up spirits languishing in clumps.
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Some sprawled out on others’ bellies, some on others’ backs, and some, on hands and knees, dragged themselves along that squalid alley.
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Slowly, in silence, slowly we moved along, looking, listening to the words of all those sick, who had no strength to raise their bodies up.
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I saw two sitting, leaning against each other like pans propped back to back against a fire, and they were blotched from head to foot with scabs.
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I never saw a curry-comb applied by a stable-boy who is harried by his master, or simply wants to finish and go to bed,
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the way those two applied their nails and dug and dug into their flesh, crazy to ease the itching that can never find relief.
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58-66. This comparison with the sufferers of the Tenth Bolgia concerns the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. Juno sent a plague to the island which killed all the inhabitants except Aeacus. Aeacus prayed to Jupiter to repopulate the island, and Jupiter did so by turning ants into men.
They worked their nails down, scraping off the scabs the way one works a knife to scale a bream or some other fish with larger, tougher scales.
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“O you there scraping off your scabs of mail and even making pincers of your fingers, ” my guide began to speak to one of them,
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“so may your fingernails eternally suffice their task, tell us: among the many packed in this place is anyone Italian?”
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“Both of us whom you see disfigured here, ” one answered through his tears, “we are Italians. But you, who ask about us, who are you?”
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“I am one accompanying this living man descending bank from bank, ” my leader said, “and I intend to show him all of Hell. ”
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With that each lost the other back’s support and each one, shaky, turned to look at me, as others did who overheard these words.
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My gentle master came up close to me and said: “Now ask them what you want to know, ” and since he wanted me to speak, I started:
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“So may the memory of you not fade from the minds of men up there in the first world, but rather live on under many suns,
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tell me your names and where it was you lived; do not let your dreadful, loathsome punishment discourage you from speaking openly. ”
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“I’m from Arezzo, ” one of them replied, “and Albert of Siena had me burned, but I’m not here for what I died for there;
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109-117. This man is Griffolino d’Arezzo. He supposedly led the doltish Alberto da Siena to believe that he could teach him how to fly. Alberto paid him well but, upon discovering the fraud, he denounced Griffolino to the bishop of Siena as a magician, and the bishop had him burned.
it’s true I told him, jokingly, of course: ’I know the trick of flying through the air, ’ and he, eager to learn and not too bright,
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asked me to demonstrate my art; and only just because I didn’t make him Daedalus, he had me burned by one whose child he was.
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But here, to the last bolgia of the ten, for the alchemy I practiced in the world I was condemned by Minòs, who cannot err. ”
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I said to my poet: “Have you ever known people as silly as the Sienese? Even the French cannot compare with them!”
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With that the other leper who was listening feigned exception to my quip: “Excluding, of course, Stricca, who lived so frugally,
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and Niccolo, the first to introduce the luxury of the clove for condiment into that choice garden where the seed took root,
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and surely not that fashionable club where Caccia squandered all his woods and vineyards and Abbagliato flaunted his great wit!
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That you may know who this is backing you against the Sienese, look sharply at me so that my face will give you its own answer,
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122. The Florentines made the citizens of rival Siena the butt of many jokes.
124-126. Capocchio (see below, line 136) makes several ironic comments here about the foolishness of the Sienese. Stricca (probably Stricca di Giovanni del Salimbeni of Siena) was evidently renowned as a spendthrift. The old commentators hold that he was a member of the Spendthrifts’ Brigade (see line 130), a group of young Sienese who wasted their fortunes carelessly.
127-129. Capocchio is referring to Niccolò de’ Salimbeni’s careless extravagance as another example of the silliness of the Sienese. The “choice garden” is Siena itself, where any fashionable custom, no matter how foolish, could gain acceptance.
and you will recognize Capocchio’s shade, betrayer of metals with his alchemy; you’ll surely recall—if you’re the one I think—
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how fine an ape of nature I once was. ”
CANTO XXX
CAPOCCHIO’S REMARKS are interrupted by two mad, naked shades who dash up, and one of them sinks his teeth into Capocchio’s neck and drags him off; he is Gianni Schicchi and the other is Myrrha of Cyprus. When they have gone, the Pilgrim sees the ill-proportioned and immobile shade of Master Adamo, a counterfeiter, who explains how members of the Guidi family had persuaded him to practice his evil art in Romena. He points out the fever-stricken shades of two infamous liars, Potiphar’s Wife and Sinon the Greek, whereupon the latter engages Master Adamo in a verbal battle. Virgil rebukes the Pilgrim for his absorption in such futile wrangling, but his immediate shame wins Virgil’s immediate forgiveness.
In ancient times when Juno was enraged against the Thebans because of Semele (she showed her wrath on more than one occasion),
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she made King Athamas go raving mad: so mad that one day when he saw his wife coming with his two sons in either arm,
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136. Capocchio is the name (or nickname) of a man who in 1293 was burned alive in Siena for alchemy. Apparently Dante had known him; according to the early commentators, it was in their student days.
1-12. Jupiter’s predilection for mortal women always enraged Juno, his wife. In this case her ire was provoked by her husband’s dalliance with Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes, who bore him Bacchus. Having vowed to wreak revenge on her and her family, Juno not only had Semele struck by lightning, but also caused King Athamas, the husband of Ino (Semele’s sister), to go insane. In his demented state he killed his son Learchus. Ino drowned herself and her other son, Melicertes.
he cried: “Let’s spread the nets, so I can catch the lioness with her lion cubs at the pass!” Then he spread out his i
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and, seizing one of his two sons, Learchus, he whirled him round and smashed him on a rock. She drowned herself with the other in her arms.
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And when the wheel of Fortune brought down low the immeasurable haughtiness of Trojans, destroying in their downfall king and kingdom,
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Hecuba sad, in misery, a slave (after she saw Polyxena lie slain, after this grieving mother found her son
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Polydorus left unburied on the shore), now gone quite mad, went barking like a dog— it was the weight of grief that snapped her mind.
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But never in Thebes or Troy were madmen seen driven to acts of such ferocity against their victims, animal or human,
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as two shades I saw, white with rage and naked, running, snapping crazily at things in sight, like pigs, directionless, broken from their pen.
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One, landing on Capocchio, sank his teeth into his neck, and started dragging him along, scraping his belly on the rocky ground.
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The Aretine spoke, shaking where he sat: “You see that batty shade? He’s Gianni Schicchi! He’s rabid and he treats us all that way. ”
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31. The “Aretine” is Griffolino d’Arezzo. (See Canto XXIX, 109-120.)
32. Gianni Schicchi, a member of the Florentine Cavalcanti family, was well known for his mimetic virtuosity. Simone Donati, keeping his father’s death a secret in order that he might change the will to his advantage, engaged Gianni to impersonate his dead father (Buoso Donati, 44) and alter the latter’s will. The plan was carried out to perfection, and in the process Gianni willed himself, among other things, a prize mare (the “queen of studs, ” 43).
“Oh, ” I answered, “so may that other shade never sink its teeth in you—if you don’t mind, please tell me who it is before it’s gone. ”
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And he to me: “That is the ancient shade of Myrrha, the depraved one, who became, against love’s laws, too much her father’s friend.
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She went to him, and there she sinned in love, pretending that her body was another’s— just as the other there fleeing in the distance,